Inside Index Exchange’s multimillion-dollar start-up investment pact with FirstPartyCapital

As part of the tie-up with IX Labs, Index Exchange has committed to a decade-long partnership with FirstPartyCapital, with the ad tech outfit also offering to collaborate with outfits within the fund’s portfolio, such as Bedrock, LightboxTV, and Lumen, on infrastructure services, deeper integration with its platform, and go-to-market strategy.

Rich Ashton, FirstPartyCapital’s co-founder and managing partner, highlighted industry-specific macroeconomic trends, such as the Justice Department’s bid(s) to dismantle Google under antitrust laws, as an indication of how the tectonic plates of the industry are currently shifting, which equates to opportunity. 

“It is the perfect time to invest in the ad tech industry, with the DOJ pushing to break up Google’s ad tech monopoly and booming trends such as retail media and AI are paving the way for the next wave of digital advertising,” he said in a statement. 

Meanwhile, Index Exchange, which rebranded from Casale Media in the mid-2010s to signal its next iteration, i.e., into one of the industry’s largest supply-side platforms, is characterizing the partnership as an important indication of its intent to evolve further. 

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Mayuran Yogarajah, head of IX Labs and an engineer at Index Exchange, explained how shifts across the industry, including changes in signal loss, a desire to reduce the ad tech tax, and platform strategy, have informed Index Exchange’s investment thesis. 

“I think a lot of the value creation has happened historically on the buy-side, it’s been like that for quite a while,” he told Digiday, noting how areas such as media-measurement are areas of particular interest to the company. “We think this is an opportunity for the next generation of companies to create value on the sell side of things… that’s what we’re calling sell-side decisioning.” 

IX Labs’ latest partnership mirrors similar moves from its peers in the ad tech sector, with DoubleVerify making a $1 million commitment with FirstPartyCapital earlier in the year. 

Meanwhile, The Trade Desk’s 2023 investment in Sincera, via its investment arm TD7, later evolved into a rare purchase from the demand-side platform earlier this year after execs there felt a full-on acquisition would aid its push to encourage buying ads on the “premium internet.”  

IX Labs’ Yogarajah hinted at parallels with Index Exchange’s strategy, whereby aiding partners, such as startups within the FirstPartyCapital portfolio, can help their evolution plans. “We’re somewhat of an infrastructure company,” he said, referencing pre-existing partnerships such as its tie-ups with entities such as Chalice and Cognitiv.

“This [latest partnership] is more than a capital-injection… we see it as us creating a structured pathway for these companies to build of top of Index’s platform… as more and more of these companies create offerings and services on the sell-side, we want to become the platform of choice that they look to,” Yogarajah said.